Speech rate in children with and without phonological disorder.

BACKGROUND Speech rate in phonological disorders. AIM To compare the performance of children with and without phonological disorders in different speech rate tests. METHOD Participants of this study were 20 children diagnosed with phonological disorders (PDG) and 20 with typical speech development (CG), aged 4 years to 10 years and 11 months, of both genders. Speech rate measurements (total duration time, syllables per second and phonemes per second) were analyzed in two imitation tests, being one standard and the other based on phrases taken from the child's own speech, each composed of a short and a long sentence. RESULTS The CG presented a significantly better performance than the PDG, when considering all of the measurements applied to the standard imitation test and also when considering the total duration time of the long sentence in the self-imitation test. This indicates that the length and type of sentences influenced the performance of both groups. CONCLUSION Lower values of speech rate are observed for children with PD, participants of this study, due to possible language or motor deficits, although there is evidence of speech rate control due to the length of the sentence. All of the measurements indicated this difference, specially for the standard imitation test.